Kojima's Legacy

Share.

We reflect on the influence of Hideo Kojima's 20 years in gaming.

By Mark Ryan Sallee

Hideo Kojima announced during this May's Konami E3 press conference that this year, 2006, marks his twentieth anniversary in the games industry. Since his start at Konami in 1986, Kojima has produced and directed some of the games industry's most influential titles. His first game, Metal Gear, is considered the first stealth-action videogame and birthed a genre that's since spawned many of the industry's most popular titles and impacted other genres with stealth influences. Kojima's later titles, both in the Metal Gear series and out, have also established benchmarks of production excellence, merging videogame fantasy with Hollywood-quality presentation, an achievement many games have imitated though few (if any) have matched.

In his twenty years of gaming, Hideo Kojima has established a rather inspirational legacy. Both in his games and in personal interviews, Kojima has waxed philosophical and set in place influences that will likely last past his lifetime. These influences and inspirations, and the games that ignite them, are this philosopher's legacy.

Metal Gear (1987) Kojima's first released project at Konami was the original Metal Gear, released in 1987 on the MSX platform. Unlike other games of its time, Metal Gear stresses stealth tactics over direct combat in order to progress through the game. This revolutionary concept is executed with exceptionally simple, yet sophisticated, design.

Taking the role of Solid Snake, players romp through the fortress of Outer Heaven with very basic actions. Snake can only run, punch and shoot, but these limited abilities are enough to allow for a very unique game experience.

Enemy AI is very basic in Metal Gear, a distant precursor to the AI systems more modern gamers are used to. Without the development of vision cones, enemies simply see in straight lines, and in place of Metal Gear Solid's now defining alert modes the original Metal Gear simply lets players evade pursuing enemies by reaching certain safe screens.

Even with its meager means, Metal Gear delivers a relatively sophisticated game experience with involving plot and puzzling challenges. Whether Kojima knew it or not, Metal Gear would grow to become the creator's career-long project and would influence the design of games years in the future.

Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (1990) On the heels of Metal Gear's revolutionary design came the second installment in the Metal Gear saga. Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, unlike the pseudo-sequel Snake's Revenge, is a Kojima project through-and-through and advances the stealth-based gameplay of the original. It is in this second Metal Gear game that Kojima introduced the now-iconic radar system (known in later games as the Soliton radar) which drastically changes the stealthy play.

Instead of playing hide-and-seek on just one screen, Metal Gear 2 players are forced to use the radar to plan movements well in advance. With enemies moving from one screen to another, Metal Gear 2 becomes a more difficult game than its predecessor, but not without added tools for the player. Metal Gear 2 also introduces the ability to crouch, giving players access to hiding spots necessary for evading enemies in pursuit. And in place of Metal Gear's safe screens that immediately halt enemy pursuit, Metal Gear 2 utilizes alert modes to reward tactful evasion with silenced alarms.

Perhaps the most notable progression of Metal Gear 2 is in the production values. Improved graphics and presentation help tell a story that's more vital to the experience. Developed characters and plot twists prefaced the complex stories of future Kojima games, and played a role in the maturation of videogame storytelling.